Chapter 12 #2
“Long enough to figure out who it is. Hopefully.”
Frustration etched into her features as she blew out a shaky exhale and placed her hands behind her head. She turned slightly away from me. The gesture caused her Henley to rise, showing off the taut skin of her stomach.
I glanced quickly up at her face. She’d been hiding it before now, but I could see how stressed she was. It was in the pinch of her mouth, the deep furrow between her brows, the way her fingers clenched into the hair at the back of her head.
“Are you required at home?” I asked in all seriousness. “Mac will understand if so.”
She shot me a look of surprise as her arms flopped down at her sides. “No. It’s fine.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Robyn let out another long exhale. The woman was wound tighter than a watch. “My sister. Regan. Mom’s worried about her.”
Sister?
Right. The half sister.
I had forgotten Robyn had a sister. Regan Penhaligon was the daughter of Robyn’s mum and stepfather. Something occurred to me. Something strange, considering she’d mentioned both her mother and Seth Penhaligon in previous conversations. “You haven’t talked about your sister.”
Robyn looked away, expression carefully blank.
Had being a cop taught her to control her deeper emotions?
Mac always hid his feelings when it mattered too.
“Not a lot to talk about. Regan is a bit of a loose cannon. We were close when we were kids … not so much now.” She raised that arrogant, stubborn chin of hers.
“I let her get on with her life, and she leaves me to get on with mine.”
I could relate and surprised myself by admitting, “I have one of those.”
“Oh?”
“Arran. My youngest brother. He’s second youngest after Arrochar.”
“I knew that, actually. He’s thirty-four, right?”
“Yes?” My tone was questioning. How did she know that?
Robyn met my stony stare for stony stare. “My father works for your family. I did my research.”
Fair enough.
“Didn’t find out much on Arran, though.”
“There’s not a lot to find. He took off years ago.
Drops me an email now and then to let me know he’s okay.
Stops by for Christmas every second year or so and leaves just as quickly.
” Because I couldn’t help but lecture him about what he was doing with his life.
My youngest brother was a hellion at school and a petty criminal as a teen.
I had used my contacts to get Arran out of trouble more times than I could count, and after one explosive argument, Arran had left his family behind.
I lived daily with the fear I’d receive a call that Arran was either in prison or dead.
While I was close to Arrochar, Thane, and my niece and nephew, Eilidh and Lewis, there was no denying I had failed Brodan and Arran. I just didn’t know how to bring them back into the fold without pushing them further away.
“Hey, you okay?” Robyn took a step toward me, her perfume lingering between us.
I retreated physically and emotionally. “I’m fine,” I clipped. “But I can’t stick around being interrogated by you all day, Ms. Penhaligon. I’m here to collect Mac.”
A coolness leaked into her expression. “Yeah, about that … that’s why I’m here. There’s no need for you to be here.”
Indignation fired my blood. “I’m Mac’s oldest friend. Who else would be here?”
“Uh … I don’t know. His daughter?”
“A familial label has to be earned, in my opinion.”
She cut me a dark look as she pushed past. “No one asked your opinion.”
I hurried after her. “My vehicle is bigger than yours. It will be more comfortable for him.”
“My car is comfy enough. And my company is far superior. I’m not leaving him stuck in a car with you for an hour.”
“Some people would pay good money to be in my company.”
“I don’t need to know how you paid for college.”
It took me a moment to understand the gibe. I growled at her back as she pushed into Mac’s private room.
“Inferring I was a whore. How mature.”
I was vaguely aware of Mac dressed and sitting on the bed, eyebrows raised to his hairline at our entrance. But my attention was captured by Robyn. Laughter danced on her lips, but her eyes filled with anger. “You just handed it to me.”
I seethed. Why was she so bloody aggravating? “Mac is coming with me.”
“With me.” Her hands flew to her hips, drawing my gaze there.
“You’ll take him back to his cottage.”
“That’s where he wants to go.”
“I don’t bloody care what he wants.”
“Of course you don’t, Mr. I Have to Control Everyone and the Universe.”
I bared my teeth. “Who will look after him if he goes back to the cottage, alone?”
Her mouth slammed shut, her lips pouting lushly.
My hands curled into fists at my sides.
Robyn turned to face Mac. “Who is going to look after you?”
Mac glanced between us, and something in his searching expression made me uncomfortable. “I’ll be fine.”
“No.” Robyn shook her head. “You won’t. The doc says you need to rest for a few weeks. Gentle exercise only. You’ll need taking care of. I could do it.”
Hearing the uncertainty in her voice, I stepped toward Mac. “No, if Mac will be reasonable, he’ll see that the best idea is to stay at the castle where staff and his security team can look after him.”
“Staff? No.” Robyn bit her lip, brows furrowed in thought. Finally, she said, “Family should take care of him.”
Something softened in me. “You can visit as often as you please, Ms. Penhaligon. But the staff at Ardnoch are Mac’s family.”
Just like that, her expressive face closed down. She again donned what I had come to think of as her cop face. “Fine.”
“Not fine.” Mac glared at me. “I told you, I’ll be okay.”
Exasperation exploded out of me. “Mac, for fuck’s sake, give me one less thing to worry about, please.”
Mac glowered. Silence filled the hospital room.
And then, “Fine. I’ll stay at the castle,” Mac grumbled under his breath. “Jesus Christ.”
“I’m going to find the nurse and see when we can get out of here.” Robyn cut me a dark look. “Try not to yell at my still-injured father while I’m gone.”
I rolled my eyes, throwing my hands in the air as I turned away from the irritating father and daughter.
Not long later, Mac bristled as the nurse forced him into a wheelchair that barely fit his large physique.
“Is it necessary?” I asked the nurse, knowing I’d feel just as mortified being wheeled out of the hospital like an invalid.
“It’s policy.” The nurse remained unmoved.
I flashed her the smile that had gotten me laid many a time. “Can you not let it go, just this once?”
The nurse smirked. “Not even for you.”
“Let’s just go.” Robyn took hold of the wheelchair handles.
“I’ll do it.” I tried to brush her aside.
“I’m already here. Hey, get off. My God, you are unbelievably controlling.” She pushed Mac toward the exit.
I wanted to throttle her. “It’s not about being in control. I thought your father might appreciate me wheeling him instead of his bloody daughter.”
“Mac is fine.”
“And I’m controlling? I’ve never met a more aggravating ballbuster in my life.”
“Ugh, men like you always call women like me ballbusters. Just because I don’t melt in a puddle at your feet every time you flash that stupid-ass grin doesn’t mean I’m a control freak or a ballbuster.”
“Men like me?”
“Afraid of strong women.”
“I’m not afraid of strong women, Ms. Penhaligon. In fact, I rather enjoy fucking them. A strong woman isn’t afraid to let a man be a man.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Men. You always make it about sex.”
“I meant in life. You mentioned something a while ago about me unshriveling my balls. Perhaps if you didn’t make men feel small, and treat them like they were unintelligent and useless, you wouldn’t make their balls want to climb inside themselves.
Maybe then you wouldn’t be almost thirty and still single. ”
It was a low blow. And a sexist one at that.
I knew it.
But she frustrated me in a way I couldn’t remember any woman ever doing.
“Lachlan.” Mac’s voice cut through the air like a whip.
Robyn had rolled him to a stop at my Range Rover.
Fuck.
I’d forgotten my friend.
Mac scowled up at me in warning.
Robyn refused to make eye contact with me.
Double fuck.
So much for avoiding her these last few days so I wouldn’t say something shitty that might get back to Mac.
I’d said it right in front of him.
A terrible silence fell among us as Mac eased out of the chair and into the passenger seat of my SUV, his hand pressed to his stomach as if to hold himself together.
“I’ll see you at the estate,” Robyn said softly to her father.
Mac gave her a tender smile. “Okay, wee birdie. See you soon.”
Something devastating flashed in her eyes at Mac’s pet name. She covered it quickly with a tight smile, and I closed the passenger door.
I followed Robyn around the hood of the car as she wheeled the chair toward the hospital to return it. An apology caught in the back of my throat as I stared at her back.
Then she halted, leaving the chair to stomp back to me.
Anticipation thrummed through me at the stubborn tilt of her chin.
“Not that I have to explain myself, but I’m single because I want to be single.
” She drew her eyes down my body and back up again in disgust. “It’s just downright low of you to turn whatever bullshit this is between us into what you just did.
I don’t need you to think a certain way about me.
In fact, you’ve made it pretty clear how little you think of me.
I don’t care.” She shook her head, her fierceness electrifying the air between us.
“I am epic, and if a guy plays his cards right, I know how to make him feel like a goddamn king …”
She straightened, casting me one last disdainful look. “So don’t you think for one second your opinion has any effect on my self-esteem.”
I was stunned silent.
Not just because of her words.
But because of how they made me feel in places I had no right feeling with regard to Robyn Penhaligon.
As I watched her stride away pushing the wheelchair, tight ass swaying with her swagger, I cursed under my breath.
It took me a minute to gather myself before I could turn back to the Range Rover and get in. Avoiding Mac’s eyes, I started the engine and swung the car out of the parking space.
More awkward silence hung between us.
“You do let her get to you, don’t you,” Mac broke in, sounding half amused, half unimpressed by my lack of self-control.
“I can’t help it.” My hands squeezed the wheel. “She’s irritating. No offense.”
I could feel Mac’s penetrating, relentless stare.
“What?” I snapped, throwing the man an aggravated look before returning my focus to the road.
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing. You’re thinking something.”
Mac sighed. “The two of you remind me of me and Donna Ferguson in the playground when we were eight years old.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’d pull her pigtails to get her attention. She’d trip me when I was running past her.”
“I’m still not getting it.” It was a lie. I knew exactly what Mac was getting at. My stomach churned at the thought.
“Let me be clearer,” Mac said, his voice hardening. “I have no right to interfere in Robyn’s life … but be careful, Lachlan. Be very careful.”
Tension tightened my shoulders, and I threw Mac another look.
My friend wore a taut expression of warning.
I expelled another exasperated breath. “Oh bloody Nora, Mac, you know you have nothing to worry about on that account.”
Mac’s answer was a disbelieving grunt.
The silence fell between us again, tense and uneasy.
Damn the woman, I thought hotly. I wished she’d never shown her face at Ardnoch.